On Aug. 12, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin appointed a federal monitor to oversee changes to the controversial policy. The city promptly began taking steps to appeal the decision.

“We believe that the District Court orders are erroneous as matters of law, and because implementation of the broad-sweeping panoply of remedies based on such errors are likely to cause irreparable harm to defendants and the public safety,” the city’s lawyers wrote in their request to Scheindlin.

In a statement, Michael A. Cardozo of the city’s Law Department said the administration is “highly concerned by ramifications of this decision.”

“We believe that the Police Department and its officers have acted — and continue to act — lawfully and constitutionally,” Cardozo said. “Accordingly today, we have moved before Judge Scheindlin asking her to stay her decision while the appeal goes forward. The City’s safety remains Mayor Bloomberg’s and Police Commissioner Kelly’s paramount concern. Our Police Department must be free to do its job correctly and proactively.”

Judge Scheindlin ruled that the stop-and-frisk policy amounts to “indirect racial profiling,” in which “minorities are indeed treated differently than whites,” and, “officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner.”

“Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often,” she said. “The NYPD’s practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD’s standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods.”